Most Oregon teacher prep programs receive low marks

Lee Elementary student teacher Amanda Quiroz chats with Alina Obyedkov about her letter to next year's first graders on the last day of the school year Tuesday, June 11, 2013.(Photo: KOBBI R. BLAIR | Statesman Journ, KOBBI R. BLAIR / Statesman Journ)

Most of Oregon's teacher preparation programs received low marks in a report released Tuesday by the National Council on Teacher Quality, faring poorly enough that they did not receive a national ranking.

Only two colleges — Linfield College and Oregon State University — scored high enough that they made it on a list of numerical rankings. But no program in the state was among the top ranked in the nation for overall strong performance.

"Given the increasing knowledge and skills expected of teachers, it is indeed disappointing that we could not identify an exemplary program in Oregon. However, Oregon is by no means unique," said Kate Walsh, president of the NCTQ, in a statement. "The dearth of high quality programs is a national problem that public school educators, state policymakers and advocates, working alongside higher education, must solve together."

The NCTQ, an advocacy group for education reform, evaluated more than 1,600 teacher preparation programs across the nation on various standards such as how the program prepares teacher candidates to teach reading and math, classroom management techniques and academic caliber when selecting teacher candidates.

The organization fully evaluated 20 teacher preparation programs in Oregon, but only three programs received enough points to receive a national ranking.

Oregon State University was ranked 94th for its graduate secondary teacher prep program — a top performer in the Pacific region — and 327th for its undergraduate elementary program.

Linfield College was ranked 285th for its undergraduate elementary teacher prep program.

A total of 412 elementary programs and 430 secondary programs received a national ranking.

Willamette University was not ranked because there was insufficient data while Western Oregon University's undergraduate secondary teacher prep program did not receive a high enough score to receive a national ranking.

WOU did not meet the NCTQ's key standards for selection criteria, high school content, and student teaching, according to the report. The university met the standard for classroom management and partly met standards for preparing teacher candidates strategies for teaching their subject and gathering data for the program's accountability. WOU nearly met the standards for preparing teachers how to use data from student assessments.

Mark Girod, interim dean of WOU's College of Education raised questions about how the rankings were conducted, noting that the data stems from information on written documents such as syllabi, teaching handbooks and catalogs.

Last year when the NCTQ released a different version of the Teacher Prep Review with ratings instead of rankings some higher education officials also questioned the report's findings and methodology.

"My concern is how evidence is judged to determine whether or not a program is meeting that standard is less clear," Girod said.

For example, the university didn't receive any points for a performance assessment called the teacher work sample because it wasn't comparable nationally, which brought down their score in one standard. WOU is one of the largest producers of teachers in Oregon, he said.

WOU is also part of a program called "TeachOregon" launched by the Chalkboard Project to better prepare teachers in the area, partnering with Willamette University, Corban University and the Salem-Keizer School District.

"There are so many positive things going on in education and in teacher preparation right now in Oregon," he said.